Skiers warned of deep-snow hazard

Woman pulled from tree well shocks member of ski patrol

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, January 22, 2006

TACOMA -- When John Macartney, a longtime member of the Crystal Mountain ski patrol, saw two legs sticking out of the snow near a tree, he knew he had to act quickly.

He recognized the signs of a skier who had fallen into a tree well, an air pocket that forms around trees in deep snow conditions. When a skier falls into a tree well, the air pocket collapses and traps the person, who can lose consciousness in as little as two minutes.

Four people have died in tree wells at Western Washington ski areas this season. The most recent case occurred Tuesday at Stevens Pass with the death of a 29-year-old Kenmore man.

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Because the legs Macartney saw on Jan. 15 were slowly kicking, he knew he still had a chance to rescue the skier. He kicked off his skis and started pulling and digging. He needed help, but his wife, Laurie, had skied ahead a few minutes earlier. He was off duty so he had no radio to call the ski patrol.

Macartney figures it took him five minutes to get the skier out of the tree well. When he did, he was stunned. There, unconscious with lips blue from the cold, was his wife.

"I was pretty shook," Macartney told The News Tribune. "I'd figured she had skied down to the lift."

Laurie Macartney's jaw was clamped shut, so her husband gave her mouth-to-nose resuscitation until she woke up.

After spending three days in the hospital, Laurie Macartney was recovering from pneumonia at her Redmond home.

Baugher said skiers and snowboarders are often familiar with avalanche risk, but they're usually not as familiar with other risks of deep snow such as tree wells.

Ski patrols have almost eliminated the risk of avalanches at North American ski resorts. But there's little they can do about tree wells other than education. Crystal posts signs at the ticket counter and at other locations.

Baugher said that if you stick to groomed runs, you won't have any trouble. If you want to ski among trees, don't pick areas where they're tightly clumped.

"And always ski with a partner," Baugher said. "Keep each other in sight at all times. If you lose sight of your partner, don't think you'll just meet them at the lift. Find them. If you wait too long, it could be too late."

Even the most expert skiers can fall into a tree well. Laurie Macartney is a member of the Crystal ski patrol. John Macartney has had to pull himself out of one.

After two snow-immersion deaths this season, Mount Baker posted tree well safety information online at mtbaker.us. As an experiment, workers placed 10 volunteers in tree wells. None could rescue themselves.

That doesn't surprise Laurie Macartney. She believes she fell into the tree well when she lost a ski while making her third run of the day on Cold Face.

"I was upside down and completely vertical," she said. "I wiggled around to get a little air space. I yelled, but that did not work. A lot of thoughts went through my mind and I got angry. I thought this is a bad way to go. Then I slowly went unconscious."

The last thing she remembers was moving her legs above the snow, hoping to catch somebody's attention.

"I credit her for doing that," John Macartney said. "If she hadn't moved her legs, I probably wouldn't have seen her. Nobody would have seen her."